There is something wrong with this white race

[DB Roy]

The title is a statement from William Burroughs. And it isn't like Burroughs was some libtard, whale-saving, bulldozer-blocking, tree-hugging. Kumbaya-singing, hipster-loving pantywaist. He was, in fact, a gun nut and a gay man (or at least bisexual) who refused to have anything to do with gay rights. But he was a superior writer with a writer's ability to observe and break his observations down into facts that informed his writing. He was, I think, the only fiction author whose books I read voraciously--one after the other. While he wasn't conservative in any conventional way, he most certainly was not a liberal. A hero to the left who didn't seem to me to have a left-leaning bone in his body. But he knew what he knew.

One thing that Burroughs knew was that racism is a societal cancer. According to a Mayo Clinic website: "Cancer refers to any one of a large number of diseases characterized by the development of abnormal cells that divide uncontrollably and have the ability to infiltrate and destroy normal body tissue. Cancer often has the ability to spread throughout your body."

Racists do the same thing to a society that cancer does to a body--large pockets of abnormal individuals that infiltrate and destroy the societal fabric, such as it is, and then spreads until the whole of that society is terminally sick with it. When I was growing up here in southeastern Michigan, ALL the white people I knew were racists. I didn't ANY that weren't. "Nigger" was generally the only term I heard ALL the white people I knew use when referring to African-Americans. I wasn't living near the cottonfields of Alabama or the rural parishes of Louisiana but in and around Detroit--a majority black city. I witnessed the "white flight" from that city as a boy. I saw how black students were treated in predominantly white schools. I remember how crazy whites acted during the busing fiasco in Pontiac, Michigan. I remember how white parents kept their children home from school to protest it. I can remember having teachers that were racists.

This racism is certainly nothing new and it isn't limited to blacks. Once again, we see anti-API racism rearing its head. 1882 was the year of the Chinese Exclusion Act. It was the first law passed in the U.S. limiting immigration (one against blacks might have happened earlier but their immigration was forced for reasons of slavery so that was okay). It was extended by the Geary Act of 1892 in which the IRS issued Chinese immigrants certificates of residence which had to be carried on one's person at all times. Those caught without their certificates were subject to imprisonment and deportation. Bail was only considered if the violator was vouched for by a "credible white person" (i.e. a white man). So, it you think the South Afrikaners forcing blacks to carry permits to be allowed on the streets was excessively cruel and dehumanizing, remember: America first.

Many times over the decades, APIs when to court to change the laws into something humane. Here is the result in a nutshell:

See, e.g., In re Ah Yup (1878) (Chinese are not White); In re Camille 1880) (persons half white and Native American are not White); In re Kanaka Nian (1889) (Hawaiians are not White); In re Hong Yen Chang (1890) (Chinese are not White); In re Po (1894) (Burmese are not White); In re Saito (1894) (Japanese are not White); In re Burton (1900) (Native Americans are not White); In re Knight (1909) (persons half White, one-quarter Japanese, and one-quarter Chinese are not White); In re Balsara (1909) (Asian Indians are not White); In re Najour (1909) (Syrians are White); In re Halladjian (1909) (Armenians are White); Bessho v. United States (1910) (Japanese are not White); In re Alverto (1912) (persons three-quarters Filipino and one-quarter White are not White); In re Young (1912) (persons half German and half Japanese are not White); In re Akhay Kumar Mozumdar (1913) (Asian Indians are White); Ex parte Dow (1914) (Syrians are not White); Petition of Easurk Emsen Charr (1921) (Koreans are not White); Ozawa v. United States (1922) (Japanese are not White); United States v. Thind (1923) (Asian Indians are not White); United States v. Ali (1925) (Punjabis are not White); In re Feroz Din (1928) (Afghanis are not White); United States v. Gokhale (1928) (Asian Indians are not White); De La Ysla v. United States (1935) (Filipinos are not White); De Cano v. State (1941) (Filipinos are not White); Kharaiti Ram Samras v. United States (1942) (Asian Indians are not White); In re Ahmed Hassan (1942) (Arabians are not White); Ex parte Mohriez (1944) (Arabians are White).

The so-called Yellow Peril fanaticism was far from over as evidenced by the Immigration Act of 1924 which restricted immigration among "undesirables" such as Middle Easterners, Hindus, East Indians and Japanese. The Magnuson Act finally lifted the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943 when 105 Chinese would be allowed to emigrate each year to the US. By that time, Japanese-Americans were locked up in prison camps. While German-Americans and Italian-Americans who were regarded as loyalty risks were also locked up, they were innocent until proven guilty. For Japanese-Americans, they were only allowed to be guilty. Their only choice was to be locked up in a regular prison camp or a really bad prison camp (see No-No Boys). Many whites today still believe the Internment was fully justified and has enough approval among whites that it was reused against Latinx immigrant children by the Trump Regime (I am unable to call it an "administration" because I have a conscience) in 2017. No real action was taken against the policy by the democrats or the courts and it was allowed to continue until Trump lost his bid for reelection in 2020.

The anti-API hatred flares up and cools off periodically. When the Japanese automobile manufacturers became real competitors in the American market starting in the late 70s or early 80s, it flared up again. The problem with anti-API hatred is that it is, ironically, non-discriminating in that no matter which specific group is currently being hated be it Japanese, Chinese, Korean, etc., it is simply extended to ALL API groups. This was made painfully obvious in 1984 when a Chinese-American in Detroit named Vincent Chin was beaten to death by two white unemployed autoworkers who blamed the Japanese for their unemployment and killed Chin by assuming he was Japanese. In the early 90s, Japanese import cars once again pushed the American industry to the brink of bankruptcy which resulted in a flare-up of anti-Japanese hatred spurred on by political leaders as Richard Gephardt who contemptuously referred to the Japanese as "those little yellow people across the ocean" and by Ernest Hollings who said, "You should draw a mushroom cloud and put underneath it, 'Made in America by lazy and illiterate Americans and tested in Japan'." By the way, I was fresh out of the U.S. Navy at that time and working for an auto supplier and found just such a flyer sitting on my toolbox when I went to grab some tools. During this time, many Korean- and Chinese-Americans reported being threatened and harassed even though those countries had nothing to do with the woes of the American car market.

Now, we are in the midst of pandemic that arose in China and spread throughout the world killing millions. Thanks in part to Trump brazenly calling it the Chinese Virus, the Wuhan Virus and Kung Flu (which earned him wild applause at his rallies), API people are not safe on America's streets. But what bothers me here even more than the car competition racism of the 90s is that the victims are almost all women and/or old people. I never thought I would see the day when whites would openly attack women. And it isn't only in the U.S. APIs in Britain are also being attacked. Of course, Britain doesn't exactly have a sterling record of dealing fairly with the Chinese if you ever bothered to read about the Opium Wars. But here in the US and Canada it is a daily occurrence when an 80+-year-old woman is shoved to the ground by a white man in his 20s or 30s. On a surveillance camera in Vancouver, a white man walks up BEHIND a tiny 22-year-old Chinese woman waiting for the bus and sucker punches her in the back of the head knocking her down and then saunters away smirking. Have you white people no shame??? What the fuck is wrong with you??????

A white man goes on a shooting spree and kills six API women (and a Hispanic woman also) and we have to debate whether or not this was racially motivated??? On the heels of this, a white man in California called a 26-year-old API woman "a fucking chink" and throws her to the ground and tried to strangle her. What is all this violence against women about???? A 39-year-old man attacked an elderly API man and then punched an 83-year-old woman in the face, blacking both her eyes. Fortunately, she fought back and whacked him in the mouth with a piece of wood, I think, sending him to the hospital but photos of her injuries look terrible. I mean, really--an 83-year-old woman??? SERIOUSLY??? My Japanese mother is 92 and I'm scared to take her out for her pleasure rides. You would think I should have nothing to fear because who would hurt a 92-year-old woman? About 70 million fucking people in this country--that's who! And they have no shame doing it. You know when they heard women being shot to death in Atlanta, tens of millions of whites in the country watched the film reports and thought, "Good!"

I've never seen anything like this. Supposedly ordinary white Americans are attacking women and old ladies on the streets. I don't understand. Shouldn't this be considered cowardice of an incredible degree??? It's becoming normalized it's happening so much. I try to picture 20- and 30-something API men attacking old white ladies on the streets--knocking them to the sidewalk, punching them in the face, screaming racist obscenities at them, strangling them and I can't fathom it. API men would never do that. I can't believe any man would but it is happening to API women every single fucking day in this country. What is happening to us?????

And white women are by far not blameless in this. These fucking Karens are something else. Who do these bitches think they are?? Two women conversing in Chinese are attacked by a white woman they did not know and had never seen before screaming at them that they are in America and had better learn English (both speak fluent English). This happens so much you can hardly separate the incidents. In one case, a white woman screamed at a 10-year-old girl and her mother to go back to China. And Karenism is not limited to Trump-supporters or conservatives. Democrat Daniel Moynihan's daughter, Maura, is the latest high-profile Karen. She walked up to an API woman, Marie Ha, and screamed at her to go back to China. The woman's husband, Dan Lee, caught her on video saying, "Go back to China!" Yet she denies she said anything racist. Lee asks her if she told him to back to Communist China and Moynihan replies, "Isn't that where you're from?" Lee and Ha were born in the U.S. nor are they ethnically Chinese. They are ethically Korean. But Moynihan denies she said anything racist. She then says it was a misunderstanding over a taxi cab. How does a misunderstand over a cab end with "GO BACK TO CHINA!!!" but it's not racist? Moynihan then says she would like to meet with them and talk things over. No, thanks, lady. Your conversational style leave much to be desired.

Then we can expect the white-controlled media to get it exactly wrong. Last year, when the anti-API attacks started, I predicted that we would see television attempting to smooth things out between whites and APIs in the wrongest way possible by ramping up programs and commercials showing white men with API girlfriends and wives and I was not disappointed. Christ, there was a shitload of them. See that, folks, all is well! Asian women are still hung up on white men and can't wait to marry them and be subservient little wives while being tigresses in bed. It's all good. It's that stereotype, I believe, that is driving the violence against API women. Every white man who never could get a date with an API girl can now get his revenge. Every white woman who lost a man to an API woman or just felt unpretty next to them can now scream obscenities in their faces the way they've always dreamed of doing thanks to the great god Donald Trump.

What changes do I expect? I don't expect any. As I said, racism is a societal cancer and the US in the terminal stages of it. It won't get better and I expect to get a good deal worse. Eventually, the hatred will die down only to flare up again at some future time down the road. Who will you whites knock down and beat up then? Kids?

[Taylor]

The thing is D.B.
White Americans are non discriminatory when it comes to violence. In other words, those that are punching out API’s likely wouldn’t mind punching out members of their own white race. Their violence may be directed at other races and certainly may be exclusive in a given direction for what ever personal preference they have, but doesn’t indicate that there is necessarily a preference of racial targets. I mean these assholes terrorizing Asian Americans aren’t indicating that their only focus is a particular group though some hate groups do.

Whites are likely to be violent towards whites first and foremost. Violence towards others is an icing on the cake. For those that are enthusiastic haters. Whites can and will be paranoid, fearful and dangerous when it comes down to them becoming marginalized.

The racism you’re describing is more akin to White Supremacy which is as insidious as the cancer analogy.

I am personally dismayed by the horrible treatment API peoples have been handed historically in the U.S. White Supremacy is so well camouflaged within the community I am a part of that I’ve grown distrustful of many people that are friends or family. Among whites there can be total silence at the dinner table when there is the mere mentioning of the sorts of violence that you’ve cataloged, that silence is an indication of some level of acceptance of white supremacy and even privilege.

[DB Roy]

The thing is D.B.
White Americans are non discriminatory when it comes to violence. In other words, those that are punching out API’s likely wouldn’t mind punching out members of their own white race. Their violence may be directed at other races and certainly may be exclusive in a given direction for what ever personal preference they have, but doesn’t indicate that there is necessarily a preference of racial targets. I mean these assholes terrorizing Asian Americans aren’t indicating that their only focus is a particular group though some hate groups do.

Whether that's true or not, it doesn't make 6 API women in Atlanta any less dead or their families any less devastated. if some Karen spit at my mother and told her to go back to China, should I explain it to her by saying that woman would have attacked whites too--especially considering that I have no idea if that is even true? My mother is nearing the end of her life and I'd like her to die peacefully than because some racist prick slamming her head on the sidewalk because he doesn't feel she should be in this country (where she has been a citizen since 1960).

Whites are likely to be violent towards whites first and foremost. Violence towards others is an icing on the cake.

In 2018, a white man shot and killed a black couple in a hardware store for no reason other than he hates blacks. When a white man pulled a gun on him, the killer lowered his gun and told him that white people don't kill other white people. So, I am not at all sure that that is true. If whites want to attack each other, go ahead. Nothing is stopping them. Just leave the rest of us out of it.

For those that are enthusiastic haters. Whites can and will be paranoid, fearful and dangerous when it comes down to them becoming marginalized. The racism you’re describing is more akin to White Supremacy which is as insidious as the cancer analogy.

But we're not talking some unemployed nutballs marching around flying Nazi flags. The people doing this are, for the most part, ordinary white people with jobs, houses, kids, church on Sunday. And I know what they teach those kids. That's where the next shooters will come from. The mainstream of white America is embracing racial extremism and they are not joking. They have so dehumanized API people that it's okay to beat an 80-year-old lady on the street. When Trump called George Conway, who is part-Filipino, a "moonface" and there was virtually nothing said about it, I wasn't surprised. Hatred of API people is wound that has been allowed to fester by the majority of whites. Not the minority.

I am personally dismayed by the horrible treatment API peoples have been handed historically in the U.S. White Supremacy is so well camouflaged within the community I am a part of that I’ve grown distrustful of many people that are friends or family. Among whites there can be total silence at the dinner table when there is the mere mentioning of the sorts of violence that you’ve cataloged, that silence is an indication of some level of acceptance of white supremacy and even privilege.

Proof that it is not a minority of nutjobs. The cancer has spread to all the nooks and crannies of white society and finding a dismayingly high amount of acceptance. Doesn't much matter to me whether a white person hears about the attacks and the killings and responds with "GOOD!" or "Well, it's terrible and unfortunate but it had to be done. We can't stay silent anymore." The second is much more dangerous and pervasive than the first.

[DB Roy]

https://nypost.com/2021/03/22/woman-att ... ly-in-nyc/

https://nypost.com/2021/03/21/asian-wom ... ate-crime/

[blt777]

wtf is this and why is it here lmao?? Isn't this website for book promotion, not ignorance, and racism.

[geo]

wtf is this and why is it here lmao?? Isn't this website for book promotion, not ignorance, and racism.

BookTalk is a discussion forum. So besides literature, there are other discussions about politics, religion, science, etc. You're free to participate in any discussion you want. If you have specific comments related to the subject of this thread, please contribute!

[blt777]

Oh it's nice to know that blatant prejudice and hatred is allowed to flow here for some reason

[geo]

Oh it's nice to know that blatant prejudice and hatred is allowed to flow here for some reason

The OP (that's original poster) is decrying the recent spate of violence and hate crimes against Asians. Where is the prejudice and hatred?

[blt777]

What do you mean? Don't act like that is all that they are doing. It is obvious they have an agenda towards the white race in particular they are singling out racially motivated incidents involving white people being the instigators specifically as if to demonize white people specifically when all races have the capacity for hatred and hate crimes. It is completely foolish what the posters are saying here, singling out white peoples race-related crimes when hate crimes are more prevalent and widespread for more races than white on Asian and white on black, such cases are simply ignored or downplayed in severity to serve an agenda of vilifying white people in general when all people are individuals and their actions should be judged as such, racism comes in many forms and the people here making grand assumptions and far reaches about white people as a race is in fact no better in thinking than the ones they are attempting to dismantle. What is racism if not ignorance and stupidity allowed to flourish? It is flourishing here with a number of assumptions on the part of the original poster. DB Roy here then goes on to say a number of false assumptions about the general populations of white Americans by saying shit like "It's the majority, not the minority" "Cancer has spread to all nooks and crannies of white society" Where is this acceptance? Where are the statistics to back up these claims? Its airless hatred spawned from fear being displayed here, similar in many ways to the way racists think and are motivated, by fear. I honestly think it's kind of pathetic that this post is accepted and agreed with blindly.

[geo]

What is racism if not ignorance and stupidity allowed to flourish? It is flourishing here with a number of assumptions on the part of the original poster. DB Roy here then goes on to say a number of false assumptions about the general populations of white Americans by saying shit like "It's the majority, not the minority" "Cancer has spread to all nooks and crannies of white society" Where is this acceptance? Where are the statistics to back up these claims? Its airless hatred spawned from fear being displayed here, similar in many ways to the way racists think and are motivated, by fear. I honestly think it's kind of pathetic that this post is accepted and agreed with blindly.

Thanks for clarifying. I think i understand where you're coming from. Hopefully DB Roy and others will weigh in, but I would argue that our country does have an appalling history of racism, especially against blacks and Asians. It's undeniable really, a stain on our nation's soul. From slavery to the Jim Crowe era to Reagan's war on drugs—which because it affected blacks so disproportionately can arguably be considered a new chapter of Jim Crowe—to the ever-present backlash to the Civil Rights movement. I would say there's much evidence that backs up DB Roy's claims, if not his passions. Though you may be right that he tends to overgeneralize, he's right that a majority of whites have historically allowed racism to fester. That's where the word "majority" comes into play and is arguably an accurate assessment.

My problem is I've read two books recently: The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander, and Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson. Both books have really opened my eyes. And the times are such that these issues are really under the microscope lately. I think that's a good thing.

When I was a newspaper reporter many years ago, I covered a few drug trials in the small town where I worked. I witnessed young black men, 18 to 20, being sentenced to ten years in prison for dealing crack cocaine. The judge in many of these cases were bound by three-strikes laws that mandated 10-year prison sentences. One judge actually apologized in court (and I quoted him), saying his hands were tied. And he couldn't consider extenuating circumstances or anything because the sentencing was mandated by the federal government. These laws on the books were passed by politicians who only wanted to show they were tough on crime. Such laws, if you take the time to look at them, unfairly targeted blacks, even if that wasn't the explicit reason for passing them.

Consider this. When Reagan launched his massive war on drugs, recreational drugs use was actually on the decline. And crack cocaine, which was more commonly used by blacks, because it was cheaper, had much harsher penalties, even though it's the same drug as powder cocaine, the form used predominantly by whites.

Michelle Alexander, in the book mentioned above, also points out that enforcement of drug laws focused predominantly in city ghettos because it was easier, and there was virtually no backlash. Because most people in positions of power are white. Most of the voters were white. It's so easy to look the other way when it comes to what's happening in the black communities.

As Wilkerson says in her book, "Custom and law segregated the white working and middle classes for so long that most would not have been in a position to see firsthand the headwinds confronting disfavored Americans."

Wilkerson also discusses the fact that many reforms passed in the 1930s and 1940s excluded farm laborers, most of whom were black. A Federal Housing Administration program was enacted in the 1950s to make homeownership easier for white families by guaranteeing mortgages in white neighborhoods specifically, but excluded African-Americans who wished to buy homes. So that we can see that a wide disparity in generational wealth still exists today.

These government programs for the dominant caste were in force during the lifetimes of many current-day Americans. These programs did not open to African-Americans until the late 1960s, and then only after the protests for civil rights. The more recent forms of state-sanctioned discrimination, along with denying pay to enslaved people over the course of generations, has led to a wealth gap in which white families currently have ten times the wealth of their black counterparts. If you are not black and “if you or your parents were alive in the 1960s and got a mortgage,” wrote Ben Mathis-Lilley in Slate, “you benefited directly and materially from discrimination.”

Anyway, these are my thoughts on a Wednesday morning. Apparently I'm passionate too. Feel free to disagree or challenge anything I've said—or what others have said. I don't think anyone here wants an echo chamber.

By the way, we're discussing Wilkerson's book on this forum. We're only about halfway through, so there's plenty of time to join in. We'd love to have you.

https://www.booktalk.org/caste-the-orig ... -f295.html